Happy Holidays to all!
I brewed a little something to keep the Christmas warmth inside the hearts and widen the smiles on the faces even more. I wish you all a lot of persistence and dedication in your works, strive for the best.
Merry Christmas, guys!

Happy holidays to you, too.
That is really a heartwarming picture. And for me it seems perfect, flawless. Everything is great: texture, materials, models. Chapeau

12.28.2012 16:25

STKydd
Member

Join Date: 03.01.2011Comments: 238

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Happy holidays, beautiful picture, The composition is very well done.

12.28.2012 22:38

szpaq10
Member

Join Date: 02.19.2012Comments: 28

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This is outstanding. I have never used Maya - is this internal Maya render engine or Vray? Glass material, candle wax, everything looks incredible real. This tree branch (don't know correct word), is it modeled or it's a picture with alpha mask ?

12.29.2012 13:43

slepalex
Member

Join Date: 10.15.2010Comments: 805

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Very beautiful composition and materials.

12.30.2012 08:56

StuartB4
Member

Join Date: 08.31.2012Comments: 255

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Really nice warm image. Love the Brandy glass.

12.30.2012 14:40

Horo
Admin

Join Date: 05.26.2004Comments: 4415

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Happy holidays to you, Eugene! Again, an outstanding render. Yes, it does feel warm and the offset brandy glass is a very nice detail.

12.30.2012 19:40

rashadcarter1
Admin

Join Date: 06.04.2006Comments: 2622

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Greetings to you as well! Glad to see this piece from you, it is magnificent. The glass effects are great, I can see faint caustics here and there. Everything is as expected, quite perfect. There is a subtle amount of noise still visible with the dof. But at this point I am reaching for pretty much any critique, this is amazing work!

The fire and the candle tip are my favorite interactions as I'm sure you spent some time ensuring that would look the way you intended in the final result. I always draw such inspiration from you. Masterful as always! Full marks. Maya is awesome, but it is not easy to use so I am every more impressed by what you can do with it. I'm assuming this was the native render engine?

12.31.2012 08:01

richter
Member

Join Date: 04.15.2004Comments: 1097

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Thank you very much for all the kind remarks.

To answer question and add some additional info:
I'm using mentalRay as renderer, not the native software renderer. It provides more control over the final image as well as base materials to build and finetune upon for architectural, organic, refractive-caustic purposes, etc.

Szpaq, the pinetree branch is a full model, it has its UVs, textures. It's always more time consuming, but I tend to make the models and assemble textures myself. This is a good way of building your own workflow and refine it in the future, adapt it to different projects. That's one side of how I perceive the 3d art.
Anyway... I've set up a simple web page to show you guys the wireframes, the textures and a small work-in-progress animation of the candle flame. I could've used a texture of flame from Google, but I really wanted my flame to be pure 3d, and using maya fluid system I made one, hence the short animation.